Photographers

David Burnett

BIOGRAPHY

David Burnett is a photojournalist with more than four decades of work covering the news, the people, and visual tempo of our age. He is co-founder of the New York based photojournalism agency Contact Press Images, now entering its 40th year. In a recent issue of American Photo magazine, Burnett was named one of the “100 Most Important People in Photography.”

Burnett launched his career as an intern at Time magazine in 1967 before covering the Vietnam War for Life magazine. His work has brought him to more than 75 countries for publications including Time, Life, Fortune, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Sunday Magazine, and many others. He has been honored by awards including the Picture of the Year Competition and World Press Photo. David received the prestigious Robert Capa Award from the Overseas Press Club in 1974. He has thrice been a juror in the prestigious World Press Photo contest in Amsterdam, chairing the board in both 1999 and 2011. In 2007 he taught at the World Press Photo Joop Swart MasterClass, leading ten emerging photographers in their quest for new direction.

He is the author of E-motion: The Spirit of Sport (1997); Soul Rebel, An Intimate Portrait of Bob Marley (2009); 44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World with an introduction by Christiane Amanpour (2010); and more recently of L’Homme Sans Gravité (2015).

MAN WITHOUT GRAVITY

June 7 – September 25, 2016

Man Without Gravity showcases the passion, drive, and thrill of the Olympic Games throughout the decades. David Burnett has covered every Summer Games since 1984 – from Los Angeles, to Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing and London. He also made two forays into the Winter Games: in 2002 in his hometown of Salt Lake City and in Sochi in 2014. His acclaimed sports photographs have been highly awarded by the World Press Photo Foundation, the International Olympic Committee and the China News Photographers’ Association, among others.

“I have the luxury of never having been the photographer who was relied upon to get the winner in that victorious pose,” Burnett says. “So many photographers have great experience shooting those sports that I might only see once every four, or even twelve years. My mission, I feel, is to study the sport, the motion, the players and to get pictures that spectators may never witness by simply sitting there observing the games.“

As one of the world’s most respected photojournalists working today, David Burnett has photographed in over 75 countries and witnessed numerous significant historical events spanning his nearly 50 year career. Burnett launched his career as an intern at Time magazine in 1967. From 1970 to 1972, he covered the Vietnam War for Time and Life. In 1975, he co-founded the renowned agency Contact Press Images in New York, and has produced photographic essays for Time, Life, Fortune, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine, among many others. His awards include “Magazine Photographer of the Year” from the Pictures of the Year Competition, the ”World Press Photo of the Year”, and the Robert Capa Gold Medal from the Overseas Press Club, to name but a few. He is the author of E-motion: The Spirit of Sport (1997); Soul Rebel, An Intimate Portrait of Bob Marley (2009); 44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World with an introduction by Christiane Amanpour (2010); and more recently of L’Homme Sans Gravité (2015).

SOUL REBEL

February 1 – March 31, 2015

On assignment for Time magazine, photojournalist David Burnett first photographed Bob Marley in 1976 at his home in Kingston, Jamaica. Burnett continued to document the reggae legend on his seminal Exodus tour throughout Europe during the spring of 1977, this time for the pages of Rolling Stone. Burnett’s vision coupled with Marley’s larger-than-life charisma resulted in this amazing collection of previously unseen images.

Compelling and incomparably candid, Soul Rebel honors the 70th anniversary of Bob Marley’s birth with a testament to the legacy of a legend. For any reggae lover or music history buff Soul Rebel offers a matchless glimpse into Marley’s life shortly before his tragic death in 1981.

“Thirty years after photographing Bob Marley and the Wailers, I was surprised when my daughter, then a college sophomore, took me to one of her friend’s dorm rooms to show me a poster on the wall, made from a photograph I’d done of Bob at home, at Tuff Gong, in Kingston. That a whole generation, born years after Bob’s death, could be so drawn to him and his music really touched me. That’s when I realized it might be time to share my pictures, most of which had never been published.”